Janet Jackson looked as if she meant business. With her hair shorn and slicked back on Tuesday night, at the first of two sold-out shows at the Bill Graham Civic, she took the stage wearing a simple black tank top, utilitarian jeans, a diamond-studded collar, bright red lipstick and a matching bandanna on her left wrist. Her arms were almost as taut as her smile.
Over her very long career, the 44-year-old singer and actor has taken on many different personalities - from Michael's doe-eyed, perpetually sweet-natured little sister to the scorned dominatrix on her most recent album, 2008's "Discipline." But at the Civic, on tour in support of her 3-year-old greatest-hits set, "Number Ones," she seemed mostly intent on demonstrating her sturdiness.
Jackson has had a tough decade. The last time one of her singles cracked the top 10, "Dharma and Greg" was a prime-time television series. Her label cut her contract short. Her last major tour was plagued by a mystery illness that left a trail of cancellations, postponements and disappointed fans. Meanwhile, people are still sending letters of complaint to CBS over her "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show with Justin Timberlake in 2004.
At Tuesday's concert, most came ready to forgive, bearing banners and homemade shirts in her honor. Just in case anyone needed further persuasion, Jackson blitzed the audience with hits, opening the night with a breathless "West Side Story"-inspired dance routine and medley of classics delivered in a blur of sweat and jutting shoulders - "The Pleasure Principle," "Control," "What Have You Done for Me Lately?," "Feedback," "You Want This."
From a pop star known for her elaborate getups, the show was pointedly bare bones.
She didn't pause for pleasantries. She didn't squander any of the production budget on costume changes (unlike other stops on the tour, there were none here) or fancy graphics (the video display, which gave out midway through the show, looked like a standard Apple II-era screen saver). She had two microphones at her disposal, the trademark headset and a jeweled handheld, but only occasionally let her husky voice come over the feather-light recorded vocals.
Instead, Jackson threw her body full force into the songs, unleashing a flurry of those famous family moves as the band barreled seamlessly through a quick succession of choruses from her multimillion-selling golden years - from "Escapade" to "That's the Way Love Goes" - with only the slightest change in rhythm.
The set was broken into five parts by lengthy intermissions. The first, preceding a quartet of sing-along ballads, included a reel of uniformly distressing clips from Jackson's appearances in films and television series like "Good Times" and "Diff'rent Strokes." The next featured a slide show of glamour shots that appeared to have been pulled off a quick Google Image search.
In one of her first large public appearances since Michael's death in 2009, Jackson paid brief but meaningful tribute to her brother, offering a snippet of their duet "Scream," and closing her 90-minute performance with a slide show of family photos showing the siblings together while she sang the ballad "Together Again."
It seemed like a good place to end. Not just the show but the bad spell Jackson has been going through. The concert, packing in some 30 hits, worked at affirming her legacy as pop royalty. But what will she do for a follow-up?
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